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Curator’s Corner
Reporting Clashes With Government Policies
‘The watchdog role of the press is never more vital than during a national crisis.’
By Bob Giles
When the United States is on a war footing, there is
a tendency to set aside many of our traditional
checks and balances by a well-intentioned instinct
for national unity.
Congress gives the President what he says he needs, with
fewer questions asked. At the Pentagon and in media relations
offices around the capital, secrecy emerges as a practice,
if not a policy. Voices of dissent fall silent. Public debate
is avoided. Americans are told to watch what they say.
Essential among many forms of patriotism that emerge in
a time of national crisis is the duty of the press to be watchful
over the exercise of power. With Congress on the sidelines,
there is no forum for a national debate on our military and
foreign policy. The press remains the single institution free
to independently probe for facts the government wants to
shield from American citizens.
During the cold war, this nation paid a heavy price for
secrecy and deception used to justify military actions and for
a pliant press willing to censor itself or unwilling to challenge
the official version of events.
Nieman Reports is devoting much of this issue to an
examination of reporting on terrorism, not only to demonstrate
that it is an enormously difficult journalistic assignment
but also to explore and explain how certain practices
of the U.S. government are denying citizens important
information.
The administration’s impulse for controlling information
is complicated by the nature of combat in Afghanistan. As
cities and major regions of that country come under control
of the anti-Taliban forces, the western press (though assuming
great risk) can move more freely and provide eyewitness
accounts and images of how the war is being fought.
This mobility of journalists—aided by advances in technology,
such as videophones—has undercut one of the
Pentagon’s major strategies for managing how the press
report the war: the Department of Defense National Media
Pool. Institutionalized pool coverage was used in the Gulf
War, effectively limiting independent movement by U.S.
journalists. After the war, frustrated representatives of U.S.
news organizations tried to negotiate a better arrangement
but reluctantly agreed to continue the pool practice in future
wars. The early combat in Afghanistan , absent U.S. ground
forces, allowed journalists to move with great freedom and
greater risk reporting a picture of the war unlike any since
Vietnam. The pool was activated in December, igniting
controversy in the selection of CNN over the networks to
accompany commandos to Tora Bora.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says, “Open and
independent reporting will be the principal means of coverage
of U.S. military operations.” Yet the government continues
to seek ways to deny Americans information. It is
blocking news media access to satellite images of Afghanistan
and neighboring countries, including images that would
enable journalists to evaluate reports of bomb damage that
killed civilians. Pentagon staffers who discuss military operations
with news media have been told that they are breaking
federal criminal law.
The administration views this as a public relations war as
well as a military war. It has chosen to deny Americans access
to what it interprets as Taliban or Al Qaeda propaganda,
rather than favoring openness in the belief that American
ideas and ideals will prevail. At the start of the war, Voice of
America was bullied into canceling a scheduled broadcast of
an exclusive interview with Mullah Mohammed Omar, the
leader of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban and a defender of
Osama bin Laden. And the administration persuaded television
news organizations to engage in self-censorship that
deprived the public of a newsworthy statement by Osama
bin Laden. Major daily newspapers and wire services wrote
stories about the statement, but failed to print a text giving
readers a fuller context of his message.
President Bush’s regrettable decision to try accused terrorists
in secret before military tribunals would deprive the
world of the evidence presented against bin Laden and his
aides and risks undermining the legitimacy of any verdict.
When the war against terrorism goes well, the public is
more likely to accept official explanations that national
security interests justify exceptions to transparency and
accountability. Opinion surveys show that the public is
content to allow the Pentagon to decide what is news. Thus,
the mood of the country seems resigned to the possibility
that the search for truth once again is an acceptable casualty
in this time of war.
The watchdog role of the press is never more vital than
during a national crisis. It is an unpopular role when the
approval ratings of the President are so high or when the
Pentagon asserts that the national interest requires secrecy.
Monitoring our government at war goes beyond asking
technical military questions or probing instances of bad
judgment or miscalculation. Yet with the majority and minority
in Congress and the nation silent for the most part, the
press is obliged to examine the larger issues and build the
foundation for debate on fundamental policies that politicians
are now so willing to shy away from. ■
Nieman Reports / Winter 2001 3